Sorting for Plastic Bottles Recycling using Machine Vision Methods

Due to the increase in population and consequently the increase in the production of plastic waste, recovery of this part of the waste is an undeniable necessity. On the other hand, the recycling of plastic waste, if it is placed in a systematic process and controlled, can be effective in creating jobs and maintaining environmental health. Waste collection in many large cities has become a major problem due to lack of proper planning with increasing waste from population accumulation and changing consumption patterns. Today, waste management is no longer limited to waste collection, but waste collection is one of the important areas of its management, i.e. training, segregation, collection, recycling and processing. In this study, a systematic method based on machine vision for sorting plastic bottles in different colors for recycling purposes will be proposed. In this method, image classification and segmentation techniques were presented to improve the performance of plastic bottle classification. Evaluation of the proposed method and comparison with previous works showed the proper performance of this method.